Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

Yes, well, I definitely came into the category of ‘all sorts’, I thought. But I expressed genuinely felt thanks, and spent most of the rest of the afternoon lying on the bed half dozing and half watching TV, until around 5 p.m. when I heard Gladys calling up the stairs. Marti Smith had returned.

I made my way down to the kitchen. Marti, back in her biker boots and leather coat, was smiling broadly.

‘Good news, Marion: the SOCOs have finished at Highrise. I got the call as I was driving over here.’

I was pleased and relieved, even though I had come to the conclusion that staying at the vicarage might not be the ordeal I had feared.

‘You’re welcome to stay here, of course, but I’m sure you’ll want to be in your own home as soon as you can,’ said Gladys, full of understanding again. ‘I’ll drive you, if you like.’

I nodded, and smiled my thanks.

Marti Smith interjected.

‘I think I’d better take you, Marion,’ she said. ‘I would expect there to be press waiting at your home. Could need dealing with.’

There were too. Not as many as there had been at the police station that morning. Just a couple of reporters and photographers and one TV crew, but quite enough to lower me deeper into despair. They were waiting in the yard at the front of the house and surrounded the Mini as we pulled to a halt.

‘Just a minute,’ said Marti, gesturing for me to stay put.

She got out of the car and addressed the assembled little throng, in a manner far more authoritative than you would somehow expect from so slight a creature with pink hair, introducing herself and telling them she was representing me.

‘Mrs Anderson has nothing to say and indeed is legally unable to say anything at this stage,’ she said. ‘I am sure you all realize that you are on private property. Therefore I must ask you to leave, to make your way up to the top of the lane and wait there. Now skedaddle.’

To my surprise, the group meekly and immediately retreated. Only when they were out of sight did Marti walk around to the passenger side of the car, open the door and invite me to step out.

Then came the worst surprise of all that day.

As the press disappeared up the lane a taxi cab swung into view and pulled up alongside the Mini. Out stepped Robert, his anxious features fully illuminated in the glare of Highrise’s security lights.

The very sight of him made me angry all over again, immediately stirring up feelings of distress and apprehension equal to anything that I had experienced during my confinement at Heavitree Road Police Station.

‘My darling, whatever has happened?’ he asked. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d been arrested. Why on earth didn’t you contact me? I’d have come home straight away.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want you to come home. Not after what I now know about you. You’re not my husband any more.’

‘Look, can’t we talk?’

‘How did you find out I’d been arrested?’ I asked.

‘It’s been on the news,’ he said.

Of course it had. Robert would have seen reports of my arrest. I knew well enough that watching television was the number one off-duty activity for the men on the rigs.

‘You weren’t named,’ Robert continued. ‘Not in the reports I saw, anyway. They mostly focused on the recovery of the child, but also mentioned that a woman had been arrested at her Dartmoor home in connection with the abduction, and that it was believed she’d recently lost her own son. Naturally, I put two and two together. I called the Farleys and they confirmed it, said they’d heard from the vicar’s wife...’

Robert carried on talking. I stopped listening. Gladys might be a wonderful woman in many ways, she might be a vicar’s wife and a committed Christian, but she was no saint. I would have expected her to be no more able to resist a good gossip than any other human being. And I’d known the village jungle drums would be beating. I just somehow still wasn’t prepared for the reality of it at all.

‘... Anyway, I got a chopper back to the mainland first thing this morning,’ I heard Robert say in the background. ‘Caught the first available flight to Exeter, and here I am.’

‘Yes, but God knows why,’ I snapped at him.

‘I want to help, of course,’ he said, managing to sound quite wounded.

‘You know what, Robert, you’re the last person I want help from any more.’

He recoiled slightly.

Over his shoulder I could see movement by the farm gate just to the left at the top of the lane. It looked as if the photographers were trying to aim long lenses at us.

‘Oh, come in, for God’s sake, and let’s get it over with,’ I commanded him. ‘But I warn you, I do not want you here.’

Marti Smith had yet to say a word. Tough as she patently was, it was clear that she had no intention of getting between husband and wife.

‘Right, Marion, I’ll leave you two to it then,’ she said eventually, as I opened the front door. Then she paused. ‘You obviously have a lot to discuss.’

That was an understatement, I thought. Though the truth was that I didn’t particularly want to discuss anything with Robert. Not yet anyway.

I just nodded.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, keep you informed,’ she said.

I thanked her, and stepped into the house, pausing to check the new burglar alarm. It had not been activated. Well, the SOCOs who had remained in the house after my arrest wouldn’t have known the code. But so much for any police concern for my security, I thought. At least they’d locked up. There was a key on the doormat. They must have used the one that lived on the hook on the kitchen wall and then posted it through the letter box.

Robert followed me into the hallway. I heard his little gasp as he began to notice the sorry amendments to Highrise. The grandfather clock which had stood there so proudly was missing, of course, and there was nothing on the walls which had previously been lined with those lovingly collected paintings and prints. I strode into the kitchen and could hear his footsteps on the flagstones as he followed me. I turned towards him as he stepped through the kitchen door.

His face was a picture. He looked absolutely bewildered. I could see his puzzled gaze taking in the Welsh dresser empty of our wonderful dinner service and the collection of Toby jugs which I had inherited from my gran. The glass-fronted cupboards were also empty, of course, and most of the glass broken.

‘My God, whatever has happened here?’ he asked, his jaw slack with disbelief.

I had wanted to see his reaction. Although it seemed impossible that he could be involved in any way, not just because of logistics but because I honestly still believed it was not his intention to harm me.

I told him about the intruder in the night and then the trashing of our home.

‘Hence the burglar alarm,’ I finished. ‘At least I reckoned I could put a stop to that kind of thing happening. I hadn’t bargained for someone dumping an abducted and abused child in the stables.’

Robert seemed speechless. When he eventually did speak he took me totally by surprise. Again.

‘Have you contacted the insurance people?’ he asked.

I did a double take.

‘I haven’t contacted anyone, I didn’t even think about insurance,’ I said, realizing as I spoke that it might seem rather extraordinary that I hadn’t. Perhaps I’d just been too shocked, or perhaps subconsciously I hadn’t really wanted to rebuild my home. I wasn’t sure.

‘Presumably the police gave you a crime number,’ Robert continued.

Of course, I thought, PC Bickerton had told me to call to be given one. And wasn’t it widely considered to be the only real point in calling the police for a burglary nowadays, so that you had a crime number for your insurance company?